Entering China is no longer just shipping good Thai products to a distributor. Industry advisers say smaller exporters should target second-tier provinces that fit their product, not the biggest cities. Local competitors copy products within months, so keep investing in differentiation that is hard to copy. Over-reliance on a distributor is a risk: one Thai brand saw orders jump from 10,000 to 100,000 cases, but the producer hesitated to expand capacity, and the distributor later built a copycat factory. Check who controls brand and customer data before scaling orders.